“Reversus veni ut qui pereunt,” I say again.
The fire spreads past my waist, reaching my torso.
“Reversus veni ut qui pereunt,” we say together.
My heart stops for three beats and then resumes with such force that I swear the muscle is going to explode from my chest. I sink to my knees, taking Ryan with me.
My heart skips out a new beat—one that keeps time with the pulse of the earth beneath us. Magnus was right—the earth is alive, breathing, and beating to the same rhythm flowing through my body. The sound of worms tunneling below the surface resonates in my ears. Buds sprout on the nearby trees draining nourishment the roots.
Every organism around me is alive and thriving.
Except for Ryan. His heart beats slower than mine. A darkness weighs on him, slowly consuming the good within.
“Do you see it?” he asks.
I reach for his face. “You’re sick.”
He places a hand over mine, holding it to his cheek. “The Grimoire is out there. Where is it?” Ryan clears his mind, taking me with him.
We’re standing in a room. The lights are off. Water drips from a leaky pipe overhead. Ryan is chained to a wall, screaming as he bleeds from his bare chest. Someone dressed in a black cloak stabs him in the side. Just beyond her, there’s a table. On the table rests a thick black book with overflowing pages. The cloaked villain pierces Ryan’s side with a dagger, and he cries out.
“No, I don’t want to see that,” I say, yanking my hand away.
“You’ve seen the book now. Call for it,” he says, wiping blood from his nose with his fingers. “The book belongs to you. It’ll come back.”
“Reversus veni ut qui pereunt,” I say.
Tears well up and flow freely. Ryan’s pain merges with my own as the burning begins anew. I scream out. In my peripheral, I see Larkin come for me but Bennett holds her back.
Power rushes through me. The torches are flames shooting to the sky. Thunder booms as the heavens open sending sheets of rain down on us. Still, the fire burns searing every nerve ending in my body. I chant harder, searching this world for the book. Tokyo flashes before my eyes. A family in Denmark sits down for breakfast as the scene changes. The ground rumbles beneath me, shifting as I call out again and again. The bone in my right leg shatters, but I hardly feel it. I’m drowning in my own blood; suffocating from the inside out.
“She’s dying!” Larkin shouts. “Stop, Candy! Stop!”
Ryan takes me in his arms, holding me as I face the night sky. “You’re close. I can feel it.”
Suddenly my mind lands on a room in a castle far away. The book sits on a pedestal, surrounded by flames and locked behind glass.
“Reversus veni ut qui pereunt!” I holler with all my might.
And just like that—the torches die out. The rain stops and all noise ceases.
Ryan wipes something from my face with his fingers, which turn red at his touch. “You’ll heal. I promise.” He rocks me back and forth.
Every inch of me aches ands screams. My femur shattered. I can feel the marrow in the bone knitting itself back together rapidly. I’d cry from the agony, but I’m too weak to summon tears.
“This is the price?” I ask.
“Yes, my love.” Ryan kisses my forehead. “But you did it.”
“He’s right.” Bennett holds up the book that I saw.
“The price was too high.” Larkin wipes her cheeks with her sleeve.
“She’ll be fine,” Magnus says, kneeling by my side. “You’ll be okay, kid.”
Jasper approaches. “I don’t want to be a witch.”
“It’s not always this bad,” Ryan says. “She’s just new to the craft. In time, she’ll grow stronger and it won’t hurt so much.”
“We need to clean her wounds.” Larkin cringes at my wounded hands. “You can’t ever do that again,” she sobs. “I’m nothing without you. You hear me?”
I try to smile but even my facial muscles are exhausted. “I’m the Willow to your Buffy.”
She nods emphatically. “Yeah.”
“All right, enough with the drama.” Bennett holds the book with both hands. “We’re ready to get Grandmother back. I’ll reach out. Branson can make it happen.”
“I’m going,” I say, shifting in Ryan’s arms.
“Whoa! No, you’re not. Emphatically no.” Larkin holds out her arms to prevent me from getting up.
“I’ll be fine soon.” I rub my head. My brain feels like Swiss cheese.
“Candy, you did your part. You should rest,” Ryan says. “It’ll be at least a day before you can even attempt to do another spell.”
“I’m going to get my grandmother back.” My voice is firm with a hard edge. “Take me inside. I’ll rest until it’s time to leave.”
“And then what?” Larkin points to our group. “Are we going to take on Claire and her minions?”
I sit up. “We’ll do whatever it takes to get her back. I won’t lose any more family.”
Not ever.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“You shouldn’t have done the spell.” Larkin lays next to me on my bed, her boots dangling over the edge. “It could have killed you. If you die, who will love me for who I am?”
My eyes are heavy as my bones mend. Every muscle feels as if it’s been stretched and twisted. The healing drains what little energy I have left.
“You’d have Bennett,” I murmur.
“Bennett only loves me because he has to. Jasper only accepts me because we’re family. But you take the whole package and don’t complain.” She rests her head on my shoulder. “We can survive being wolves, but I can’t survive without you.”
“Then I won’t die, okay?”
“Okay.”
Ryan knocks on my door, opening it with one hand and holding a mug with another.
Larkin gets up. “I’ll give you two a minute.” She walks past Ryan and turns around, so he can’t see her. Talk to him, she mouths before leaving.
He stands several feet from my bed. “How do you feel?”
“Like a semi ran over me and then backed up and did it again.”
“That’s to be expected the first time. It really does get easier.”
“How are we here, Ryan?” I rest my head on my pillows, staring at my ceiling. “When I cast that spell, I saw you being tortured in another life, but I only remember pieces of the first one.”
Ryan sets the mug down on my nightstand and sits down next to me on the bed. I scoot closer to the wall, keeping at least twelve inches between us.
“When you died, your soul moved to limbo. Witches, being servants of nature, don’t die and cross over like humans do. They go to limbo. If they haven’t fulfilled their purpose, they’re sent down to Earth in another life. That happens until they finally do what they were meant to do. Your soul has been sitting in limbo since that first life, waiting for the right time to return.” Ryan brushes his wavy hair away from his eyes. “But that didn’t happen to me.”
“What happened to you?”
He swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “I didn’t just write the spell, Candy.” His green eyes are sad.
“You had blue eyes before,” I say quietly.
“They’re actually brown in this life. The dark magic . . .” He lets his words fade away.
“Practicing black arts was forbidden.” I tug on my hair. “For good reason.”
He flinches. “I never thought—”
“Ryan, we brought darkness into this world when we did that spell.” My voice is a sharp knife cutting us both as a reminder of the guilt tainting both our souls.
It is also the secret that’s haunted my subconscious for a thousand years; one that I will take with me to the grave again.
“It’s on me. You had no idea what the consequences would be, but I suspected. I was warned, but I’d always felt this yearning for more power and the darkness called to me. When your village was destroyed, I finally had the excuse I ne
eded to give in.”
“Your soul is cursed, isn’t it? That’s what I felt when we connected.” My hands shake. There is so much I still have to say, but I don’t have the strength to do it.
“Yes.” Ryan folds his hands in his lap. “I would not have been reborn had my family not cast a spell before I died.”
Darby’s memories—she feels like a completely different person who’s hijacked pieces of my brain—are never far from my reach. But I don’t think of the night we died. I let the memory sit in the black abyss that’s eating away at my soul.
“I see,” I say.
But I don’t.
“Did you check the book for the key? We have to find the spell before Claire does.” I sigh, wishing for the strength to sit up.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I can’t touch the book, Candy.” Ryan turns so we’re facing each other. “Or practice good magic.”
With a start, I sit up though my core muscles scream at the effort. “If we break the wolf curse, what happens to you?”
“My soul will be free.” He turns away from me. “For a thousand years, I’ve gone through one life after another alone. I tried repeatedly to break the spell, but it was impossible to do it without you. I can’t live another life, Candy. When this one is over, I want to move on and find peace.”
I take his hand, squeezing it as my heart and eyes fill with empathy.
The bedroom door opens and Bennett walks in. Jasper stands behind him, lingering in the hallway.
Bennett’s eyes are rimmed with red. “I talked to Branson.”
Larkin reappears. “Did you by any chance ask if he has a girlfriend or whatever?”
It could be the end of the world and Larkin would still be determined to land a date with Branson who I’m pretty sure is at least ten years older than her.
Bennett’s lips are a thin line across his cheeks. “He’s not into jail bait.”
Larkin folds her arms. “Whatever.”
“What did Branson say?” I ask, fighting to stay awake.
“He’s taking his guys, and they’re going to make the trade—the book for Grandmother.”
Slowly, I push up on my elbows to a sitting position. “Branson has guys?”
“Yeah.” Bennett paces my shag carpeting.
“Why aren’t you happy?” I ask.
He should be happy. We’re about to solve one problem, so we can move on to the next.
“I’ve looked at the book, Candy. There are at least a hundred spells in there. All of which could be misused if they fall into the wrong hands.” His words fall like bricks. “This is about more than just the curse.”
Rubbing my eyes, I try to bring the world into focus.
“There’s a lot at stake that has nothing to do with us being cursed.” Bennett comes to my bedside. “We can’t give the book to Claire.”
Larkin jumps up. “If we don’t give it to her, we won’t get Grandmother back. I know we haven’t had the best relationship, but I’d miss her if she were gone for good.”
Words I never thought I’d hear Larkin say.
Bennett groans. “We can’t give her that book! There’s a spell in there that talks about circumventing the laws of nature. I don’t exactly know what it means—”
Ryan reaches for the mug and hands it to me. “That spell was the basis for the wolf curse. It could be used for a variety of things. All of them bad.”
“We can’t hand over that book,” Bennett says.
“So we won’t,” I say.
Claire will never back down. She’ll just keep coming until something or someone stops her.
Larkin grabs a handful of her dark hair, twisting it around her fingers. “We don’t have a choice.”
“There’s always a choice,” I say, Oksana’s words echoing in my mind. Ryan hands me the mug. It reeks of sour milk and sweaty gym socks. “What is this?”
“Herbs. It’ll help you heal faster.”
Larkin takes a sniff, grimacing. “That smells wretched.”
Ryan ignores her. “It’s not that bad. It’ll help. I promise.”
I raise the cup to my lips and close my eyes. The first sip takes like pure vinegar. The second is jalapenos blazing across my taste buds and down my throat. The third is sour milk, making my stomach churn. I hand Ryan the mug. “That is the worst thing I’ve ever tasted.”
Jasper stands in the doorway. “So basically it’s worse than Larkin’s cooking.”
My eyebrows go up and Larkin’s mouth falls open.
“Jasper made a joke.” Bennett smiles, raising his hand for a high-five. “That was funny, man.”
Jasper smacks his hand, wearing a small smile.
I blink, suddenly feeling very awake. We need that book to break the curse. What does Claire want it for? She can’t perform magic herself. “She’ll need a witch to cast any of those spells.”
Ryan holds the mug. “You’d be surprised just how easy it is to find a witch who will work for pay.”
While my cousins argue among themselves paying little attention to what Ryan said, I know exactly what he means.
His power has been used for a price. How could my soulmate have gone so far over to the dark side?
“You guys should go home. We’ll trade the book for Grandmother and then figure out how to get it back later.” I get off the bed, finding my aches and pains are gone.
“Seriously?” Bennett shakes his entire body. “We can’t do that.”
“Look the three of you don’t have magic yet and I’m all tapped out. What’re we going to do? Show up and take out an army with our ninja skills? We’re not kids anymore. It’s time to be realistic,” I say.
They can’t be involved in what comes next. It just isn’t safe. If I don’t make it, maybe there’s a chance one of them can break the curse.
Larkin’s eyes narrow. She grabs Bennett by the shoulder. “Come on, she’s right. Let’s go home.” She gives me a nod. “We’ll talk tomorrow and come up with a plan.”
I hold my sigh of relief. “Sounds good.”
“Fine. Get some rest,” Bennett says, grumbling out the door.
Jasper gives me a wave. “Talk to you later.”
I grab him and pull him in for a tight hug. “I love you, Jas.”
He doesn’t wriggle from my grasp—a first. “I love you too, Candy.”
If Larkin suspects something else is going on, she doesn’t say a word. My cousins walk out. I go to my window, waiting for them to emerge out front. When they do, I turn to Ryan.
“We’re going to get the book back,” I say.
“How?”
“I don’t know. But we’ll figure it out on the way. Come on!” I glance around the room. The red leather jacket Larkin gave me sits on my desk. I pull it on and head out the door, pausing in the hall.
“Do you drive?” I ask.
Ryan smiles. “Yeah.”
“Good. Let’s steal my dad’s Porsche. I know where he keeps the keys.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, if he really cared about anything in this house, he’d be here.”
With my new jacket on, I hurry towards the garage. It’s nearly midnight. There’s no time to waste.
***
“Branson really does have guys. Like a whole army of them,” I whisper.
We’re crouched in the bushes outside the McGregor Corporation. Branson unloads a black van of armed men dressed in black military gear.
“Those guys will be useless,” Ryan says.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that no bullet can kill a wolf.”
“Not even a silver bullet?”
“No. The point of the spell was to make us indestructible. To kill a wolf, you have to either cut its head off or drain the magic that made it a wolf in the first place. Both are near impossible.” Ryan rubs the back of his head. “How are we going to get in?”
“There’s a side door. We just have to take out the two guard
s posted there.”
I’m talking about assault like I’m turning in a late English paper. Is it the wolf talking or Candy?
“And what will we do when we get inside?” he asks.
We have to stop Claire. By whatever means necessary. “I’m not sure.”
“You know this is crazy, right? Two teenagers breaking into a secure facility to literally take on two armies—one human and one not.”
“I know it sounds bad on paper but—”
“But it’s family and family is everything. You used to say that in your last life too.” Ryan’s eyes darken. “The more I use dark magic, the faster I—”
I grab his arm to keep him from saying. “I know.”
“Okay, then let’s go.”
While Branson and his troops file through the front door, we head around to the side of the building. Two guards—one on either side of the door—talk to each other. They don’t seem to notice as we approach.
“You distract the big one while I hit the little one from behind,” I whisper.
“Are you serious right now?” he whispers back, raising his hands.
I grab his right arm. “No.”
He lowers his arms. “Fine, we’ll do it the hard way.”
Just as we reach them, the security guards turn in our direction, drawing their Tasers.
“Good evening, Ms. McGregor,” the short, chubby one says.
“We’ve been expecting you,” the taller one says with a grin that shows teeth badly in need of a cleaning.
“Right,” I mutter, raising my hands to surrender.
“I could take care of this,” Ryan says under his breath.
“Or,” Larkin says from behind me. “We could take care of this.”
I turn to see Larkin, Bennett, Jasper, my aunt Pam, Larkin’s mother, and all of my uncles.
Stepping forward, I yank the Tasers from their hands. “I’ll be taking those.”
“Jas, tie them up and wait outside, okay?” Larkin says.
“Yeah, okay.” Jasper produces zip ties from his pockets. He loops the ties around the guards’ wrists. “I can fight too though. You guys aren’t the only ones who took boxing lessons.”
“What’re you guys doing here?” I ask.
My aunt Pam, tall exotic goddess that she is, steps up. “I hear we have a situation.”
First Full Moon Page 18
